Train Wreck of the Week: The Secret Life of the American Teenager

There is nothing worse than watching this sanctimonious piece of garbage. The stilted dialogue and horrific acting is an embarrassment to the medium of television. Shailene Woodley plays Amy Juergens and shows promise as a pregnant teenager, but is saddled with repetitive dialogue that does not make any sense. Even worse are the stereotypical characters. One Asian character, Alice, relays facts and statistics at the drop of a hat. The easiest girl on the program is Adrian, a Latina. Unsurprisingly, the school’s good girl is a white blonde named Grace, who vows to stay pure until marriage. This is marketed as a family show, but the only messages children and young teens get is the reinforcement of terrible stereotypes that society shoves in our faces at a young age. The depiction of a teenage pregnancy is not as glamorous as in the 2007 feature, “Juno,” but the misogynistic characters (Amy’s father played by the awful Mark Derwin) and the biggest creeper who ever crept (Amy’s so-called-boyfriend-who-looks-exactly-like-Bob Saget Ben played by Ken Baumann) are more than enough reasons to stay away from this ABC Family drama.